What might be called the
"non standby " vessels of the Havila fleet were bought by Groupe Bourbon
in 2003? . They are operated by Bourbon Offshore, a subsidiary based in
Norway. Havila was formerly known as Remoy Management. They purchased the Boa fleet in about 1998 at least part
of which was made up of former Smit Lloyd anchor handlers. These are
being disposed of by the Bourbon management.

Groupe Bourbon operates
some of its ships under the banner of Bourbon Offshore in Norway, which in
turn owns Bourbon Ships AS. No distinction between any of these ships is
made on this website.

The company has been the
first to embrace the Xbow design from Ulstein Verft, and
the Bourbon Orca emerged from the yard during the latter part of
2006, with further platform ships of this configuration following. In
April 2007 their anchor-handler Bourbon Dolphin sank while
anchor-handling west of Shetland at the Transocean Rather. This
event is discussed in detail elsewhere on this site. Shortly afterwards another Bourbon vessel sank in
West Africa.

Bourbon's latest production (In 2009)
is the Bourbon Liberty series. They intend to build 52 anchor-handlers, the 200 class and 24 platform
ships, the 100 class, according to the publicity delivering one every two
weeks until some time in 2012.

The vessels described here
are those of the Bourbon fleet which are not operating
in South America, as far as we know, and are not part of
the listed Bourbon Norway fleet. Some of this collective
information has depended on sightings by our
contributing photographers in various parts of the
world.

It seems likely that the
marathon construction of the Bourbon Liberty classes may
now be complete, or nearly so.

Having apparently completed
the Liberty Class it now seems that Bourbon are building
20 of the Bourbon Explorer 500 class. It is still not
apparent how many have been built, and a couple have
been sold. It is now a bit difficult to see where all
these ships are but I am doing my best. There are ships
under construction.

There is much that could
be said about this concept, not least the confidence the company must have
in the design. They are not even conventional in construction. they will all
have three propellers, one in the middle which is fixed, probably, and one
on each side which are azimuthing. This configuration according to the
publicity will provide a greater level of reliability, and in the text of
the supplement various ship-masters testify to the ease with which the ships
can be handled. This may be just as well, since one has difficulty imagining
how they will manage to place skilled staff on each of these ships as they
enter service (extract from news and views).